I'd say it's more that the game nudges us away from the extremes. After all, we have 'extreme' kindness options like not cheating with Mina or refusing to placate Kathleen's lust for flamboyant cruelty, and I don't think the game is weighted towards them.
I think we need to discern what kind of nudging we’re talking about:
- There is deliberate nudging on the part of the devs, because the devs want to give the players illusion of choice but steer the outcome of the game in a canonical direction,
- there’s accidental nudging due to bad planning and then
- there is “natural” nudging due to not every choice and every possible path being equal.
The main problem, as I see it, lies with 1, if it is done poorly, so that the illusion breaks, 2 regardless of reasons and 3 if consequences are opaque, making it difficult for the player to figure out which choices/paths are suboptimal, easily leading to dead ends, where the player unintentionally has failed all or most viable routes.
Having some choices be suboptimal in themselves is no problem as I see it and I think the game has plenty of those, as there, for example, are conversations where the “right” answer nets you affinity points, whereas the wrong answer gives you nothing and none of the answers forces the player down a particular path.
Now, PC is constructed in a way as to give the players the choice between a more moral route (I say “more”, because it’s simply not possible to play 100 percent moral, because then Edwin wouldn’t be working at PC at all, he is an inherently flawed character) and a more depraved route, usually, but not always, measured in toughness-points. The more moral route will terminate in Ewdin leaving PC, whereas the more depraved route will terminate with Edwin staying at PC (and possible advancing into a leadership role). According to TD1900, the devs actively strive to not make the more moral route a suboptimal one as measured in sex scenes. From that I think we can infer that they also don’t intend to make the more depraved/more tough route suboptimal.
This further means that I think we can safely assume that any nudging away from either the moral route or the depraved route is due to 2, ie it’s not intended, because the idea is that both routes should be viable. And I think that this is what we have been discussing regarding the last update, that some of us feel that we’re beginning to list into 2. It’s not terrible or anything, but it is there.
And to be clear, as I pointed out earlier, PC does have plenty of suboptimal choices and combinations of choices, meaning that *always* going for the most moral or most depraved choice possible is no guaranty for an optimized playthrough. On the contrary, it probably will lead to a suboptimal playthrough (if we assume that optimization = as many sex scenes and relationship alternatives as possible) as a certain amount of mixing is expected. An interesting question is if trying to go completely down the middle is a more, less or equally viable route compared to the moral and depraved routes?
IMHO the reason the game seems to be nudging to the kind side of the line is because the society norm is for people to be empathetic and well behaved. The MC often struggles with latter (especially in his youth) and seems capable of the former only when he has a personal connection to the other person, but he knows he needs to fit in with the outside world. So it's natural that he would react warily to actions that might cause him to fall off the wagon and threaten his place in the world; even if he ultimately decides to take the action, he needs to think it through first. Whereas being extra nice to people rarely does long-term harm to your reputation (though it's worth noting he does still worry about how helping Rosalind and Veronica might hurt his standing with the Club when those options come up).
I don’t disagree with anything here, but I do want to point out that while kind/altruistic actions usually ingrate you with the person you’re being kind to, it also tend to have a cost in the sense that you have to give up something of yours (time, resources, opportunity and so on) in order to give that to the other. If anything, games have a tendency to over incentivise kindness/goodness, as the players seldom have to bear the cost that the kindness/goodness would entail for the character they’re playing. This is something to be vary of, if you’re making a game where you want the asshole route to be as rewarding as the white knight route.
Also, I think it's possible we're overstating how much 'high Toughness' options hurt you with the girls. The girls often react poorly to Tough options that are directed against them, but that's to be expected. It's less common for us to lose points by being Tough to someone else; I think most of those are Hana, followed by Veronica. For Hana, I'd say it's fair to say that she's just incompatible with high-Toughness behavior (at least unless the Club winds up changing her). For Veronica, I'm not as sure. She definitely doesn't like the Club, so any Toughness actions that toe the Club line will earn her ire. But I'm not sure she'd be all that upset in a case where the MC unconcerned with the problems of a house girl or one of the other carnations.
Basically, my point is that I think it might be possible for us to stay on the path for most girls even with a relatively high Toughness. I think our ultimate decision about what we do with the Club will have a much more profound affect on those paths. The 'darker' options will probably end (or hopelessly twist) most of those paths. There will probably be a lot of overlap between the dark options and high Toughness, but I'd expect it's still possible to pick most of the dark options even with mid-range Toughness.
You make a really good point here, so far, almost all possible relationship points squandered due to high toughness/depraved choices are because those directly affected by these choices won't like Edwin as much as they would if he acted kinder towards them personally. So far, it’s mainly Veronica that you can loose a bunch of points to by acting depraved/tough even though she isn’t personally affected by your actions. Even Hana mostly just talk a good game. As long as you don’t contradict her when talking with her (no reason to do that just because you’re on the high toughness path, I’d consider that naturally suboptimal choices, as there is no cost for Edwin to simply agree with her), you won’t lose out on her affinity points. I’ve combined a maximum toughness playthrough (as in having reached the cap in toughness) with maximum affinity on the Hana path.
However, while this is true, it doesn’t take away from Tumais point that the way we seem to be heading at the moment might mean (if nothing is done) that there will not be nearly as many romantic choices down the line for the depraved route (high/maximum toughness) as there would be for the moral route. That in turn would lead the depraved route to be a suboptimal route, which I, as I pointed out above, assume it is not supposed to be the case.
As I also pointed out, I think this can be ameliorated by allowing a depraved/high toughness Edwin to corrupt Mina and/or Hana. Both these women are young and probably haven’t their personalities set in stone yet. While I don’t know exactly how, I do assume that this will be a possible path for Hana, as she is made part of the leadership of PC, with her probably being both a possible end-game LI for low toughness Edwin (she is uncorrupted, they escape PC together) and high toughness Edwin (she is corrupted, they remain at PC together)
For Veronica, I'm not as sure. She definitely doesn't like the Club, so any Toughness actions that toe the Club line will earn her ire. But I'm not sure she'd be all that upset in a case where the MC unconcerned with the problems of a house girl or one of the other carnations.
I agree about Veronica. She have a chip on her shoulder regarding PC and Kathleen, which affect how she feels about people doing the bidding of PC/Kathleen. But I don’t view her as a crusader for good (that’s more Hanas role) and on the contrary, she seems to get off on a bit of dominance herself, as long as she’s the one in the driver seat. Her almost predatory reaction towards teenage Mina, when you bring Mina to the gym, also tells a different story, than that of a morally upstanding citizen. But alas, this doesn’t matter if you borked your chances with her by playing along with Kathleens depraved games, because I don’t think we’re going to get some “you and me are not so different” redemption moment any time soon. If your affinity rating already is low enough to lock you out of certain actions, you’re probably done for as far as romancing her goes, and that's where I am at my current playthrough even though "my" Edwin has tried his best to keep her happy without turning to much into a sofite himself.
I'm not going to tell anyone how to feel about a character (even my favorite), but I do think that's a very ungenerous view of Veronica's backstory. We have no first hand knowledge of her marriage or her wife, so I don't think we should take Kat's word that Veronica was ultimately at fault for the failure. It's possible, but we don't know enough to be certain yet. Veronica might only have thrown herself fully into saving the gym after the divorce because it was all she had left. Even if the gym played a large part in the failure of their marriage, without knowing what Liliana's objections to the gym were, we can't really be sure how valid they were and thus how much blame she should bear for any strain those objections caused.
Meanwhile on the gym itself, I think you're giving too much deference to Samson and not enough to Veronica. He said her coach (Danny) was reluctant to burden her with the gym, which you take as a sign she knew it was a bad investment going in. But it's possible Samson dissuaded Danny from conveying those concerns to Veronica, either by convincing him the gym really was viable or by paying him off to keep his mouth shut ("A sick man with debts is easily persuaded"). That would certainly be more compatible with what Veronica herself said in the sauna; she said it didn't occur to her that being uncrowded was a bad sign, not that she ignored bad signs she was aware of. Given how self-critical she is in that scene, I'm skeptical she was covering for her mistakes.
Likewise, just because the gym was struggling under Danny doesn't mean it was a genuine millstone. Veronica mentioned several problems beyond low membership, and those tie in well with the shenanigans Samson mentions (like directing her to his buddy's leasing company). Given how hard Samson claimed to have worked sabotaging her, I'm not going to assume Veronica would have failed simply because the gym was losing money before she bought it. More importantly, Veronica specifically says her problems with the gym largely predate meeting Samson and we know they met at an industry show for gym equipment. If Samson really did persuade Danny to give her a bum deal, the amount of money she was losing *at the start* could be far more than just those caused by the gym itself.
As far as Veronica being friends with Samson, I see no evidence of that and what evidence we do have suggests the opposite. She says she initially thought of him as a "run-of-the-mill narcissistic asshole." She got drunk with him when they first met, but the context (as far as she says) was discussing business. Samson's side of their early history is less detailed, but it mostly focuses on knowing of her through Danny. If he was already manipulating her before they actually met, I very much doubt he had any interest in befriending her.
Of course none of this means you need to feel sympathy for Veronica, and I certainly agree her reason for entering the competition is much less serious than Rosalind's. I just think you might be underestimating how far Samson has gone to sabotage her.
Agree on this to. Poor Veronica.
Does not have the most urgent and deserving need, but also not the most fitting carnation seen from a more rationalist perspective, that’s without a doubt Felicia, who seem to enjoy many of the games and who’s stated goal is most aligned with the establishment that PC is. If I get to choose who wins, it might be Rosalind or it might be Felicia, but it won't be Veronica.
However, I wonder if the devs aren’t gearing up to give the player an option to bail out both Veronica and Rosalind even should they not win? So as to spare more sensitive players from going through seeing either Rosalind or Veronica (or both, should the player fancy Felicia) crushed by their defeat. Edwin is definitely trying to find some way to get Veronica out from under Samsons thumb and he’s has at least temporarily solved Rosalinds dept-problem. He could try to solve it more permanently through the same channels, as both Ian and Felicia have deep pockets and possibly could be convinced to help Rosalind out (for Felicia it could be one competitor less to worry about and for Ian, it could be if the MC has kept his Killian-bromance going, Ian might be a terrible person in some regards, but he's a got damn posterboy for "the really good friend", something that cannot be said of Edwin...).
